The Thrax Belt
The Thrax Belt is the Asteroid belt Helios Foundry keeps off its public-facing roster: a half-private labour reserve for Thrax combat/labour gene-stock crew-families between foundry contracts.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | outpost |
| Anchor System | helios-foundry |
| Controlling Faction | Helios Foundry |
| Fold Bleed | low |
| Population | 220000 |
| Role | satellite |
| Zone | Core |
Notes
Dangers: Belt-sickness: a long-term respiratory condition common to the Belt's older workers, treatable on Helios Prime and almost always untreated out here., Foundry reprisals against 'uncooperative' crew-families: an old Helios practice, supposedly ended, that has not actually ended.
Hooks: A Foundry recruiter is offering 'voluntary gene-uplift' contracts to baseline Humans on a nearby Rim station; the contracts are legal on Helios and indentured servitude on paper, and the recruiter wants the party to witness., A Thrax crew on the Belt has stopped transmitting to the Foundry; the Foundry assumes labour action; the Legion assumes defectors; the party has to find out which., A Helios metallurgist brings a sample of pre-Exodus alloy to a Belt workshop; the workshop's Thrax smith recognises the material and refuses to work it, on grounds the metallurgist does not understand.
Lore: The Thrax Belt is the asteroid belt Helios Foundry keeps off its public-facing roster: a half-private labour reserve for Thrax combat/labour gene-stock crew-families between foundry contracts. Two hundred and twenty thousand people live in pressurised rock-tunnels through the larger asteroids, in crew quarters that the Foundry built and the crew families have inherited. The Belt is where the Foundry's Thrax retire from the pour line -- not voluntarily, in most cases; the Belt is also where the Foundry draws its next generation of Thrax workers, on contracts the Confederation does not look at closely because the Confederation does not look at Helios closely. The Smith Halls are the Belt's quiet pride: independent workshops where Thrax smiths work scrap for themselves, in the older traditions, instead of for the Foundry's pour line. Helios tolerates the Halls because the smiths fix what the Foundry will not. The Quiet Rocks -- the smaller asteroids on the Belt's outer edge -- are where the Belt-sick workers go when the respiratory condition common to the Belt's older workers becomes untreatable. The Foundry's recruiters do not visit the Quiet Rocks. The crew families do, and they bring the dead home.
Notable: The Crew Quarters: pressurised rock-tunnels through the larger asteroids, lived in by the Belt's Thrax families between contracts., The Smith Halls: the Belt's independent workshops, where Thrax smiths work scrap for themselves instead of for the Foundry's pour line., The Quiet Rocks: the smaller asteroids, where Belt-sick workers go to die and where the Foundry's recruiters do not visit.